Ruminations – 10may23 (updated)

“Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.”  W. Churchill

George Rebane

The tyrant’s last refuge of legitimacy on the world stage is that his brand of governance provides the best prosperity for those under his heel.  When it comes to the legitimacy of China and its CCP, we read, “for decades China’s biggest fear was a Taiwanese declaration of independence producing a crisis for which Beijing had no good options. Yet now the regime is telling us its legitimacy will have to rest on reclaiming Taiwan because, with the prosperity machine sputtering, the ruling Communists have no other good answers for why they still rule.”  So conquest of an economically better performing neighbor is now legitimate. (more here)

Today’s debt ceiling derby is going nowhere.  GOP wants to reduce spending as part of the package, and the Dems want to continue spending under a “clean bill” that will only raise our borrowing limit with no spending limits.  Neither side will give in, even to the GOP proposal that we should only borrow enough to match the percent growth of our GDP.  The Dem proposal would blow this cap by raising our debt to 110% of GDP.  And the Repubs don’t do much better with their current budget which will raise our debt to 106% of GDP.  So go figger.  In the meantime ol’ Forked Tongue Joe promises to consider spending cuts after the GOP accepts his clean-bill demand.  Speaker McCarthy should check with Joe Manchin’s office on the pipeline deal.

DEI in academe has gone Kafkaesque.  Scott Gerber, a prominent law professor at Ohio Northern University, has been summarily dismissed for having a “lack of collegiality” in his public opposition to the school’s woke policy of diversity, equity, and inclusion.  No specifics have been given on the charge other than Professor Gerber’s views on the practice of DEI “are not part of our diversity, belonging, and inclusion plan.”  As in Kafka’s The Trial (1925), Gerber was accosted by armed police and campus security while in the middle of teaching a class, and marched out to the astonishment of all who witnessed the event.  The book tells the story of Josef K., a man arrested, prosecuted and killed by an inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader.  (more here)

[update] Again we await a new “trove of evidence against the Biden crime family.”  PJ Media report (here) that this latest trove of “bombshell evidence” was to be released today by Rep James Comer chair of the House Oversight Committee investigating the source of all the Biden family millions.  But it appears that this bombshell was just another in the long line of evidentiary duds as the sun sets tonight and all is quiet on the lamestream media front, not even a fizzle of it in the New York Post.

Comments

[Gregory]

It's clear my alma mater has also gone full woke. At the Alumni Weekend a week+ ago, Mudd was on full display. Applause at the announcement that the incoming class of 2027 was 50% men and 50% women but not cluing us into whether they think that's because they were carefully not putting their thumbs on the scales or because they were.

One alum asked outgoing President Ms. Klawe about global warming (mentioning Judith Curry by name) and she handed it off to a male professor who made a hard authortarian pronouncment that there was no sympathy for such views in the faculty there.

There were banners hanging around the campus, describing the Mudd community with smiling faces, and of one sequence of 12, there was one (1) white guy (guessing his gender as it was "assigned at birth") despite white guys being the single most common alumnus and student.

[scenes]

re: H. Mudd

They appear to be pro-female and pro-Hispanic.

https://www.hmc.edu/student-life/staff/

..although I'm not sure if there's a Robotics for Mexicans program.

Female appears to be the flavor of the day...
https://www.hmc.edu/admission/discover/

so, a question. Given the gender tendencies towards certain majors, to what extent do engineering-heavy schools need to change their programs in order to achieve 'proper' mix? Does it imply growth in health sciences? biology? 'humanities'? It seems to me that thumbs onna scale only goes so far.

One thing I like to do is to use the archive.org wayback machine to look at earlier versions of the websites. They're usually worth a laugh and sometimes surprise you.

[scenes]

"Yet now the regime is telling us its legitimacy will have to rest on reclaiming Taiwan because, with the prosperity machine sputtering, the ruling Communists have no other good answers for why they still rule.”

You know, I don't get that impression so much.

My best guess is that the Chinese are finally feeling themselves in a strong enough position to disengage with the West. It was always going to happen, it's just a matter of when. Taiwan doesn't represent a political challenge so much as a piece of property and people they think of themselves as owning (a hivemind pride thing) with the burr in the saddle of TSMC. The economic war is a two-way street as the US controls protectorate countries' trade policies.

I'd say that EVs will be the next shot fired. Cheap ones coming out of China, Japanese car sales to China falling precipitously, trade protectionism from the US as the legacy car makers are saddled with shitty executives, legacy expenses, lack of sufficient infrastructure and research spending. 1/2 the auto companies in the world won't make it through the storm.

But I'm not comfortable in any opinion. It's a big ol' complicated thing with it's own logic.

[Gregory]

scenes, Mudd added two majors since I emmaculated... Computer Science and Biology. CS volk were originally part of the math department, and green wigglies weren't anywhere. A premed at Mudd (with the lack of grade inflation, that took huevos grande no matter the gender assigned at birth) would typically be chemistry and would take their green wiggly classes on the south end of the Claremont complex, Pomona College.

They deleted one key class from the lower division common core curriculum... physical chemistry. Classic thermodynamics. Dreaded by most. It was painful, as a physics major, to do physics as chemists are wont to do.

My son majored in it at Berzerkely, and got his Havahhd PhD in chemical physics, a more quantum mechanics treatment.

[Scott O]

re Scott Gerber being fired - from 2 years ago:
https://www.thefire.org/news/tenured-professor-abruptly-fired-after-raising-allegations-anti-semitic-speech-linfield
A tenured professor was fired with zero due process. "jus cuz we can!"

[Gregory]

Regarding debt ceiling shenanigans, there will be this balancing act until the GOP lets it go to default.

The Dems know the press will be on their side. Most of it.

I'd be blaming the Dems if it goes that far.

[Cereal Liar]

Lol! Far right partisans await the Comer clown show results.

"Politico, meanwhile, reported that Comer’s failed presentation “raised fresh questions” about Republicans’ ability “to ultimately capture their white whale: the president himself.

Why does all of this matter? In part because of the degree to which the Oversight Committee chairman has proven the opposite of his intended point: Comer and his team set out to make the president look like a criminal, and by failing spectacularly, Biden has effectively been given a clean bill of political health by a group of far-right partisans."

MAGA!

[Bill Tozer]

Levin on the Biden Crime Family

https://fb.watch/kyIk4sQyNq/

[Scott O]

Serial Liar - "Biden has effectively been given a clean bill of political health by a group of far-right partisans."

I'm sure if you tell yourself that constantly you might begin to believe it yourself.
You might want to watch the video of Biden bragging about how he got the prosecutor in the Ukraine fired for trying to investigate Burisma. Total coincidence that Burisma was paying Hunter millions for absolutely nothing except getting the law off their tail.
If anyone doubts this - ask yourself why the State Dept would care about a Ukrainian prosecutor trying to investigate a Ukrainian corp?
Gotta love how the American left has become the advocates for govt and corporate corruption.

[Cereal Liar]

Scott 907pm Some of that good old Trump propaganda - so satisfying.

"Trump and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani claim Biden did this to quash Shokin's investigation into Ukraine's largest gas company, Burisma Holdings, and its owner, oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky."

See 3 links,

https://is.gd/gchT7M

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/10/21/fact-check-joe-biden-leveraged-ukraine-aid-oust-corrupt-prosecutor/5991434002/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/03/what-really-happened-when-biden-forced-out-ukraines-top-prosecutor/3785620002/